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Charles Stross

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by Charles Stross (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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“Stross’s work offers a potent reminder of why short stories used to be the preferred delivery method for science fiction.” – The A.V. Club

This selection of speculative fiction runs the gamut—from “Palimpsest,” a decidedly nontraditional time-travel novella, to “Dawn on the Farm,” an adventure of hapless secret agent Bob Howard (star of the Laundry novels: The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, and The Fuller Memorandum). Also included are “MAXOS,” a stunning example of the new flash-fiction form; his Locus Award-winning novella, “Missile Gap”; and “Unwirer,” a collaboration with Cory Doctorow. Rounding out the contents are “A Colder War,” “Rogue Farm,” “Trunk and Disorderly,” and “Snowball’s Chance,” four unique, genre-bending tales that could only come from the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century’s most daring visionaries, Charles Stross.

Print length

380 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ace
Publication date

May 22, 2009
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18 years and up
File size

697 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stross’s work offers a potent reminder of why short stories used to be the preferred delivery method for science fiction.” – The A.V. Club

“With such breathtakingly imaginative novels as Accelerando and the Nebula-nominated Saturn’s Children, [Charles] Stross has proven his mettle as a leading speculative-fiction innovator. Yet his new short-story collection showcases not only his visionary prowess but also his ability to enthrall with plain good storytelling.”--Booklist

“[A] lively collection."– DISCOVER

From Publishers Weekly

Prolific novelist Stross pauses to collect short stories that have not (yet) been stitched up into his longer work. Stories that move the U.S.–U.S.S.R. conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy (Locus Award–winner Missile Gap), offer a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox (MAXOS) and suggest clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland (Snowball's Chance) demonstrate Stross's ability to crisscross genres, blending SF, fantasy, horror and espionage. He also pays homage to his literary forebears, combining Lovecraft and the Iran-Contra scandal (The Colder War) and bringing in Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould as characters. Though individual pieces are well-done and deservedly popular, the collection has an overall sense of early drafts and reworkings of other pieces, as with Trunk and Disorderly, a P.G. Wodehouse–on–Mars test run for 2008's Saturn's Children. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002AU7MEK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ace (May 22, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 22, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 697 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 380 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #437,792 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #805 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #991 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Kindle Store)
- #1,514 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)

Customer Reviews:
94 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Alex Tolley

More great work by Stross

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2009

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Disclosure - I am a Charlie Stross fan. Read this review with that in mind.

This is a collection of 9 short stories and novellas. Of the stories there are 3 standouts;

"Missile Gap" - which should be made into a novel. Earth's crust is laid out on a huge disc orbiting another star by aliens who watch how we manage with the changed circumstances as we explore and find evidence of other planets and intelligences similarly placed.

"Palimpsest" - ditto. This is a modern rendering of Asimov's "The End of Eternity" and much better and richer by far. This tale alone is worth the price of the book.

"Unwirer" - a collaboration with Cory Doctorow which is a bitter sweet, almost poignant tale about a US dystopia due to corporate interests controlling how the internet infrastructure is developed. This is a wonderful cautionary tale populated with believable characters.

The weakest stories are:

"Snowball's Chance" - a comedy based on beating the devil
"Trunk and Disorderly" - a comedic precursor idea to the novel Saturn's Children, but which doesn't really work that well.

This is a worthy successor to his collection "Toast" and affirms for me why Stross is one of the few great contemporary SF writers. His imagination roams far and wide and treads ground where few others have gone.

Highly recommended.

2 people found this helpful

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gjsx51

Hit and miss, but overall GREAT!

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2014

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I am liking Stross more and more, but my favorite of this collection was On The Farm, a Laundry story, which has spurred me to want to read much more about the Laundry. A Colder War was spectacular as well, with its interesting 'what if' scenario spun off of Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness. I also liked some of the far flung timescape of Palimpsest, which could have been a more gritty version of the Time Lords of Dr. Who fame. I didn't like Trunk And Disorderly. Just not my thing mixing overt humor into sci-fi (Douglas Adams not withstanding). My four star rating comes from the first two stories mentioned; the lack of the fifth comes from the last.

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Joe Slater

A mixed bag from an endlessly diverting author

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2009

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I've been a fan of Charles Stross writing ever since I encountered his homage to Lovecraft in _A Colder War_. This volume reprints that story together with eight others of varying lengths. If you prefer novel-length stories you should be aware that two of the titles (_Missile Gap_ and _Palimpsest_) are substantial enough to hold their own with much longer works.

The first story, _Missile Gap_, is set on an Earth that has been translated to a giant flat disk and set in an ocean with many other translated worlds. It's a little bleak - don't expect a bunch of plucky humans to triumph because of their native can-do-it-ness. The vast godlike forces that could do something like this would be practically oblivious to the survival of species, let alone individuals.

The second is _Rogue Farm_: A farmer has to deal with a post-human entity that wants to use his farm as a launching site. It's a very short (and light) work and I didn't really care for it.

_A Colder War_ is one of my favorite stories. Charles Stross uses Lovecraft's stories as the basis for an alternate history Cold War thriller. It's *very* bleak - the best possible outcome is the annihilation of humanity. I'd love to see this as a graphic novel.

_Maxos_ is a vignette originally published in _Nature_. It's quite funny and deserves more elaboration.

_Down on the Farm_ is set in Stross's Laundry universe (_The Atrocity Archives_, _The Jennifer Morgue_) which use Lovecraftian horror as their background (they're related but not connected to _A Colder War_ which also appears in this collection). The Laundry stories seem to follow a standard pattern - the narrator is thrust into a crisis where things are not what they appear and he has to save the day through improvisation, facing eldritch horrors which are often less frightening than the nightmare that is government work. I liked this story, but it doesn't really stand alone. I'd recommend reading Stross's _The Atrocity Archives_ first.

_Unwirer_ was written with Cory Doctorow. The hero is part of a team that sets up wireless networks against government and MPAA interference. It's surprising how well the two authors' styles merge but it's not a very deep story.

_Sonwball's Chance_ is a deal-with-the-de'il story (I once read that every author has to do one of these) that taps into Stross's interest in planetary engineering and government bureaucracy. It's short and slight but worth the read.

_Trunk and Disorderly_ is a Wodehouse pastiche. I used to like Wodehouse but I just couldn't get into this story. The author notes its relationship to _Saturn's Children_: if you were a big fan of the latter you might appreciate this more.

The last story, _Palimpsest_ is nearly worth the price of admission by itself. It's more than a little reminiscent of a famous story by Isaac Asimov but so, so much better. The key to time travel is held by an organisation that wants to stop humanity going extinct. To do this it periodically re-seeds Earth with populations taken from earlier iterations of humanity and, between epochs, does things like re-ignite ths sun (which ought to have burned out within a few billion years). This story has it all - deep time, stellar engineering, time travel, paradoxes, the Singulaity and more. The author notes that it's a novella that wanted to be a novel, and I think it feels a little constrained. None the less, it's an amazing read and highly recommended.

I gave this book five stars. There were a few stories I didn't care for, but that's true of any collection. The gems of this collection would be worth buying on their own and justify the ranking.

43 people found this helpful

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Kerr P.

New stories from star author

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2020

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Most anthologies collect previously published work, but Charles Stross, one of the best writers in the field of F&SF, had used this one to present a lot of material that has never appeared before. This anthology is recommended for everyone, and a special treat for established fans.

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Matthew T. Carpenter

Stoss always delivers the goods

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2009

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For a fan of Lovecraftian fiction there are some good reasons to get this collection. If you don't have a copy of Toast, Wireless will give you a print copy of A Colder War. In my view this is one of the most brilliant Cthulhu mythos stories of the modern era For other top stories I suggest The Doom That Came to Innsmouth by McNaughton and Final Draft by Annadale). It is true to Lovecraft's cosmicism and to his essential bleakness. It also was genre bending when written, in the same sense Delta Green was. The nightmares lurking behind corners are not secret; they are well realized by governments that try to keep them secret or exploit them for gain. Another good reason to get this book is Down on the Farm, the latest Laundry novella. If you have The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue, and are impatiently awaiting The Fuller Memorandum, here is your latest fix. So far Down on the Farm is unavailable in print elsewhere. As is typical for his Laundry series, I was grandly entertained. Finally, some might argue, but I think the cosmic vision of Missile Gap has echoes of Lovecraft for its non-humancentric viewpoint.

There was not one story here I did not thoroughly enjoy, although Trunk and Disordely was amusing rather than hilarious. Fans of Wodehouse may like it better. Palimpsest has many similarities to Accelerando. It seems to me that Stross is just seething with clever ideas and short stories allows him to explore those that might not sustain a novel. If you have not sampled his compact and witty prose before, here's your chance.

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Kevin, The Wonder Horse

Good Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2019

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A bit hit and miss, happily the hits outweigh the misses and some of these stories are excellent. The last one in particular, Charles, come on you're right this really should be a novel, make it happen !

Simon Roberts

Ageing sci-fi is like alt history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2020

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A damn good collection, with some amusing stuff written before the topic it addresses got smoothed out. Recommended.
Fish slice aardwolf.

One person found this helpful

CjW & KjW

Some stories are great, some terrible but they all end before you ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2014

Verified Purchase

Some stories are great, some terrible but they all end before you get to the really good bit.
The style is so similar, its sometimes confusing s to which background belongs to which story.

I don't normally buy short stories, I won't again.

Amazon Customer

Good anthology from an excellent storyteller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

Nice mix of stories with different themes and lengths.

One person found this helpful

BRB

Super

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2018

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Super

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